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SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. L. No. 1285 



newspaper every day, and most people read 

 nothing else. Therefore, whatever of scien- 

 tific truth or of the scientific spirit you can get 

 into the daily newspaper will reach farther 

 than it can do in any other way. But it is 

 necessary to realize the narrow scope and the 

 fixed perspective of the newspaper. The daily 

 newspaper deals in just one thing — in news. If 

 you see anything else in the paper, you may be 

 sure that it got there under protest, as a re- 

 gretted necessary evil. What is news may not 

 be easy to define, but we may indicate it nega- 

 tively by pointing out what it is not. In the 

 first place, things are not printed as news be- 

 cause they are useful or useless, beneficial or 

 injurious. You can not get anything into the 

 pai>er by proving that it would be beneficial or 

 useful, nor keep anything out by proving that 

 it might be useless or injurious. Also, the 

 eternal verities are not news, though a tem- 

 porar;^ and adventitious fact regarding them 

 may be. And a thing which is news here to- 

 day is quite likely not to be news to-morrow 

 and elsewhere. The space and time element 

 absolutely dominate the news. In fact, that 

 may be made a handy negative test of news. 

 The surest way to know that something ought 

 to be printed in to-day's paper is to show 

 that it would be absolutely unthinkable to 

 print it in yesterday's or tomorrow's paper. 

 And the news must be so attached to a par- 

 ticular place and person that it would be 

 ridiculous to attach it to any other place or 

 person, or to omit the place and jwrsonal ele- 

 ment. If you can write a scientific truth so 

 that the principal statement of it shall be in 

 the first sentence, and the most important 

 words in that sentence are " here," and " to- 

 day," and your own name, and especially if 

 you can so write it that it would be absurd to 

 date it at any other place, on any other day, 

 or with any other name, then you can prob- 

 ably get it into the newspaper. And after 

 you have accomplished that one sentence, 

 which makes it news, it is astonishing the 

 amount of eternal verity you may append 

 thereto, and still " get by " with it. But don't 

 attempt to exploit the eternal verities on their 

 own merits. They are not newspaper merits. 



The second condition of news is, of course, 

 human interest. Neu'S is any humanly inter- 

 esting thing, which happens in some particular 

 place, to-day. Very many subjects of scien- 

 tific investigation, including some things of 

 educational value as to scientific method, come 

 within this definition. Professor Hitter's in- 

 vestigations of the relation of sea tempera- 

 tures and rainfall, or of the migration of food 

 fishes, have intense human interest, and if it 

 can be stated that " Professor Ritter dis- 

 covered, at La Jolla, to-day," or " announce- 

 ment was made, at La Jolla, by Professor 

 Ritter, to-day," then the time, place and per- 

 sonal factor are added, which make them news. 

 Most of the chemical investigations of the war, 

 at whatever date they can be announced, are 

 intensely interesting news — the synthesis of 

 glycerine from sugar, for instance; the extrac- 

 tion of rubber from desert shrubs, or the 

 development of new and rare metals. The 

 beginning and the end of the kelp industry, 

 and the belated announcement of war by-prod- 

 ucts, are news — the day they happen or are 

 first given out. The human facts regarding 

 the service of scientific experts to the war are 

 news, when given out. The war has made 

 chemistry respectable, to the popular imagina- 

 tion, just as the discovery years ago, by Pro- 

 fessor Walter Dill Scott, that psychology 

 woiild make money in advertising made psy- 

 chology respectable. Even astronomy has 

 rendered enough service in this war to make 

 it respectable, if the facts were given out. 



Scientific methods seem particularly hard 

 to make news of, hut our agricultural scien- 

 tists have succeeded in doing it. The one 

 thing necessary, to gain the confidence of the 

 practical farmer in the farm adviser, was to 

 remove the illusion that the farm adviser was 

 a book-learned man. When the farmer learned 

 that the farm adviser found out things the 

 same way he did, only more systematically 

 and more exactly, then his knowledge became 

 respectable. By trying practical experiments, 

 in places where they became news; by col- 

 lating practical results from their application ; 

 by putting a sporting interest into pig clubs; 

 by making speeches at farm meetings and get- 



